Re:Customer once demanded I go on location
on
IT Calls of Shame
·
· Score: 1
It is very different when each call is billable and payed. It is "free money".
But for internal IT, the following happens:
*) "Hey it is free! Let's leave our brains at home because we can always call IT."
*) Extra time spent in silly things means less time available for the real issues. And no, we do not get extra personal if we get extra work because people won't bother to RTFM.
*) Not to mention the dickhead that acts as if he was the only user of the entire company and presses you because he "is friend with Mr. X" (and surprise, sometimes he is and Mr. X only wants to stop hearing the dickhead around him).
Re:Customer once demanded I go on location
on
IT Calls of Shame
·
· Score: 1
One thing is not to understand the error message, or to understand it but not to know how to handle it.
Not bothering to even read The Fine error message is a different thing. Personally, I think that if a user can not be bothered with that, then the issue is not urgent (even if the user tells me it is).
In my case, most of my horror stories come from family IT support. Some member of my family would sometimes get an error message while he was surfing the web, and wait until the next morning to call from his job (where he was bored) to my job (where I was not bored) to tell me that "an error showed up while he was at the PC" (that info, without specifying it) and expected me to, somehow, be able to diagnose his PC and tell him (in easy steps, of course) how to solve it over the phone. Had quite a few arguments about the issue until I finally got some respect.
Re:If your customers aren't always right...
on
IT Calls of Shame
·
· Score: 1
Internal IT support in my company. The user calls, identifies herself, IT tech launches the program for remote access and asks the user to click the "Yes I do give remote access to my computer" button.
Or maybe the TSA checked it, but when someone found it later he had no way to be sure that it was a TSA-approved device and them prefered to be safe than sorry.
Just to be the devil's advocate, imagine the following scenario.
Professor reaches TSA, shows the package, passes it through X-ray / opens it to show there is no chemical / explosive, and answers questions to the fully satisfaction of TSA (yes I am teacher these are the children I teach...).
Sometime later, someone else (who of course has not been told that there was such teacher with such object in the previous flight) finds the surprise. Even if the artifact was competently investigated by the TSA, the people who found it probably had no way to verify that ---> panic button.
To me, this article is bussiness as usual, and per se (the devil lies in details) it does not show up any incompetence / abuse
I am the only that thinks that, in the event of a real coup, this policy would make things so much easier for subverting organizations? People in the coup would only need to control official media; they would need not to control private media and the internet companies because they would already been censoring this information per the government orders.
In other countries, I could talk about a faux coup d'etat all day long (although not necessarily about planning one) and the government would not care a damn.
I sincerely doubt it. They would be probably more lax, but probably in most of the countries the police / intelligence would at least investigate it (did the poster knew of anything of interest / was he just testing the waters for support / whatever). It would be akin to investigating threats to the president.
What is true is that the forum would be less likely to blame (instead they would go for the actual poster) and investigations could be more "polite". But I think (and expect) that a claim like this would be investigated.
Do you realize it has been almost 150 years since the USA had any serious conflict in its territory? And that meanwhile they have tapped resources from previously undeveloped areas?
I am translating from memory, so forgive me if I am wrong somewhere...
"A little cronopius was looking for the key of the main door in his bed table, his bed table in his dormroom, his dormroom in his house. Here the cronopius did have to stop, since he could not get out of his house without the main door keys".
IIRC, speaking about Spain, the law is also against "driving without due care and attention".
That said, over time the meaning of that phrase is interpreted to take into account new data. When it was seen that using the phone resulted in reduced "care and attention", it was defined that driving while on a phone was indeed "driving without care and attention". That meant that now the police had clear instructions about this, and that there was a public information campaign before it was put into effect. I.E., before the change it was up to the police if the driver was being careless, after the change if you are at the phone then you automatically are being careless.
You are missing the point... If you have a gun, then you need to brag about having a gun and being able to kill anybody who gives you the very minimum reason to do so (or not even the minimum).
I remember a post from someone here. A drunk/hunk guy was trying to open his garage door. Most probably the intruder would not had succeed, and even then it was unlikely that he ventured in the inhabited part of the house. The gun-loving-boy answer? Get out with a shotgun and kill him. And, of course, later come to/, and tell everybody (without being asked for) the gory details about what a shotgun can do to a human body.
The sad part is that even explaining it to him, he would not ever get to see what was wrong with him...
Spain got upset during the Davis cup once. The national anthem from the 30s before Franco was played. Though I suspect if you'd made such a cock up in Barcelona, Catalunya there'd be bemusement and muffled applause. When I was there a few months ago, the republican flag replete with purple was visible among 'occupy' protesters.
No, we where not upset. Most of us understood that shit happens, that whoever was looking for the hymn just chose an outdated source, and that it was not a political statement from anybody. And that anyway none of us knew the Hymn of Australia, so it was a tie. Most that happened was some jokes and a little nostalgia from some people.
Of course, a couple of politics decided that they had to show off their "dedication to our country" by acting as if Australia was in the brink of declaring war against Spain, and showing what a bunch of bullocks we usually have in government. That's all.
In a tennis competition in Australia, the Spanish Republica Himno de Riego was played instead of the Royal March when the players got in the podium.
Anyway, except for the few bureaucrats who thought their work was to show the world how enraged all of the spaniards were, most people understood it was just an error and not a political statement and a few make a few jokes. That was all about it.
Doesn't it really show that the US was not interested in being involved in another war, as it was still dealing with the fallout of a major economic crisis? (Hint: "Great Depression")
Those who don't know History....
After WWII, Spain was in an isolated country, with no fuel, little industry and (still) internal and external opposition to the dictatorship.
The USA easily ignored their own rethoric about democracy and freedom and used Franco as an ally in Cold War, giving him entry in internation organizations (like the UN), providing him with funds and commerce and strenghtening its regime. Invading the country to restore democracy maybe was asking a little too much, supporting a dictator another one.
Of course, not that it was nothing new (banana republics) or that they would not repeat (South Korea, Vietnam, Iran, Chile, Argentina, Panama, Irak....)
well, its an interesting one.
Did Franco win or help win the war for the allies?
Certainly not. Franco's Spain provided intelligence for the germans (see operation mincemeat), supply ports for their u-boats, and men for the invassion of Russia. Renmember that Franco declared Spain non-beligerant (we don't fight but we are favourable to) rather than neutral (we favour no one).
Spain has always awnated Gibralter, and despite all the Axis help he got he did not even move to take Gibralter.
Easier said than done. After three years of civil wars, Spain was more trouble than it was worth as an ally. Franco did indeed try to negotiate an alliance with Germany, but it demanded such support (and meant more coast to defend) that a deal was not reached.
All because Spain did not even bother to support the Axis enough to take Gibralter.
Even ignoring Franco's support for Germany.... does that mean that Franco's regime was less dictatorial or brutal?
Because it shows how easily the USA and other governments abandon all pretense of "morality" when it suits well their interest. The war against Hitler was "moral", yet helping his friends (and, in the Nurember trials, many of his economical/industrial supporters) was ok because it suited them.
If you can not lie about it, make the world forget it (hint: everyone who objects is a communist!!!).
During George "duh" Bush's administration the number of regulations increased from 110,000 to 150,000 pages. The New York Times must be using a definition of the word "deregulation" that I am not familiar with, because I would call a ~50% increase in regulations the Exact Opposite of deregulation.
Without context, the figure is pointless. It is like claiming that my software is better than yours, because mine has 150000 LOC while yours only has 110000 LOC(*). Likewise, they could have heavily regulated certains practices that affected only to marginal parts of the economy and deregulated critical ones.
For what I read here and in other articles, private companies were pretty much happy with signing away untenable mortgages because they were just selling them away, without sharing the risk. This lead to a situation where doing such simple things as checking if the borrower had a stable income and how much it was in relation to the loan where "unwise", because it could lead to the mortgage not being allowed (which meant less money for the company who sold those loans to idio... investors because they got AAA+ from a rating firm).
When the government allows this (a company profitting from brokering deals and without any responsability, and an investor who does not know what he is buying), it will end always the same way. The only incognite is how much time it will take.
For what I read, very few of the loans were "mandated". Instead, there was a massive impulse to loan to anyone without proper checks, because in the end the banks were just going to sell the junk to other investors (assured by the AAA+ from rating companies that are still out there).
This article explain why people with no ability to repay the mortgage where granted one, not because mandated loans but because the mortgaging company got its benefit from firming and selling the loan (doing a risk analysis might mean that the loan was not granted --> less profits). Also in the CS Monitor I found an article (can't found it right now, I will be grateful if someone points a link) about workers in banks and mortgage agencies, relating how they were forced (by their bosses) to accept anything as a proof of the capability of the borrower to repay the loan. Those who tried to do things in a sane way were reprimanded because they did not met the quotas that the "insane" agents did met.
In one of the stories, someone did arrive with a picture of himself in front of a bussiness (IIRC it was a gardening one), claimed that this was proof that he owned the bussiness and demanded a loan. He got it.
You are assuming that everyone that reads the news report will calmly and reasonably think if it can be applied to them, and act accordingly. You do not expect people to understand it as "OH MY GOD I CAN DO THE SAME FREE MONEY AND PONIES!" and to rush irresponsably to their financial death.*
Sir, I do admire your optimism.
* Now seriously, of course there will be both kind of readers. Type 1 readers won't make any money for the casino, nor any loss. Type 2 will make money for the casino. Anyway, I agree that type 2 people won't be enough (and most importantly, won't go to the same casinos reported in the news) so probably the casinos would have preferred to keep the money even if they missed the publicity.
Radon comes from the decay of elements from granite. If the soil is not granitic there is less problem
You better like the temperature inside, because you're certainly not burning anything to keep warm: carbon monoxide and low oxygen.
In fact the main advantage is that the temperature naturally does not vary too much during the year, keeping your home hot in winter and cold in summer. Of course, to begin with, you would not start living in a cave in a region where caves inner temperature is not comfortable (at least related to the other available options).
But not a lot of noise complaints I bet.
Given that solids transmit sounds better than air, in fact that could be a real problem. The positive point is that if your neighbour sets his amps at the maximum power, reverberation in his cave will make it way more uncomfortable for him than for you, even if he likes the music.
The main problems would be air flow and sunlight, but then again, for centuries most of the people spent less time indoors than they do now so it was then a less critical issue.
In Spain there have been dwellings in caves for quite a time, the ones I think are most famous are in Guadix, Andalucia and in Granada but I found others in distint parts too. And while some (v.g. Ibiza) may be inhabited by more hippy minded people, the others have been used by "regular" people for centuries.
Agree with what? I condone private transactions between individuals being private and not subject to government intervention of any sort, including taxes. If I sell someone my junk I should not be taxed as I made no income.
Duh? Revise your definition of "income", please.
I converted an asset into cash - at the end of the day I'm even.
The same could be say when you buy an iPhone, or a car... yet there are taxes.
However, the government doesn't see it this way (they are wrong of course),
You don't think the same than the government (or someone else), so it is obvious that they are wrong (because you are always right, isn't it?)
Forgive me if your "explanations" fail to impress me.
they want to take a piece every time money changes hands. Eliminating cash only makes this assured.
You could argue and explain why you think sales tax are a bad idea. You can vote a politician that promises to repeal it, or present yourself in such a platform. You can even decide to break the law and ignore it, hoping that you won't get caught because the amount you manage is very small and not very often.
What you can't do is to decide which laws apply to you and which don't. Sorry but that is how it works. If you must pay taxes for your yard sale and you decide you don't, you are breaking the law. Your opinion (or even if you know) about the law is not relevant.
Slashdot Mirror
It is very different when each call is billable and payed. It is "free money".
But for internal IT, the following happens:
*) "Hey it is free! Let's leave our brains at home because we can always call IT."
*) Extra time spent in silly things means less time available for the real issues. And no, we do not get extra personal if we get extra work because people won't bother to RTFM.
*) Not to mention the dickhead that acts as if he was the only user of the entire company and presses you because he "is friend with Mr. X" (and surprise, sometimes he is and Mr. X only wants to stop hearing the dickhead around him).
One thing is not to understand the error message, or to understand it but not to know how to handle it.
Not bothering to even read The Fine error message is a different thing. Personally, I think that if a user can not be bothered with that, then the issue is not urgent (even if the user tells me it is).
In my case, most of my horror stories come from family IT support. Some member of my family would sometimes get an error message while he was surfing the web, and wait until the next morning to call from his job (where he was bored) to my job (where I was not bored) to tell me that "an error showed up while he was at the PC" (that info, without specifying it) and expected me to, somehow, be able to diagnose his PC and tell him (in easy steps, of course) how to solve it over the phone. Had quite a few arguments about the issue until I finally got some respect.
Internal IT support in my company. The user calls, identifies herself, IT tech launches the program for remote access and asks the user to click the "Yes I do give remote access to my computer" button.
The user answer? "That is not my job"
Or maybe the TSA checked it, but when someone found it later he had no way to be sure that it was a TSA-approved device and them prefered to be safe than sorry.
Just to be the devil's advocate, imagine the following scenario.
Professor reaches TSA, shows the package, passes it through X-ray / opens it to show there is no chemical / explosive, and answers questions to the fully satisfaction of TSA (yes I am teacher these are the children I teach...).
Sometime later, someone else (who of course has not been told that there was such teacher with such object in the previous flight) finds the surprise. Even if the artifact was competently investigated by the TSA, the people who found it probably had no way to verify that ---> panic button.
To me, this article is bussiness as usual, and per se (the devil lies in details) it does not show up any incompetence / abuse
I am the only that thinks that, in the event of a real coup, this policy would make things so much easier for subverting organizations? People in the coup would only need to control official media; they would need not to control private media and the internet companies because they would already been censoring this information per the government orders.
In other countries, I could talk about a faux coup d'etat all day long (although not necessarily about planning one) and the government would not care a damn.
I sincerely doubt it. They would be probably more lax, but probably in most of the countries the police / intelligence would at least investigate it (did the poster knew of anything of interest / was he just testing the waters for support / whatever). It would be akin to investigating threats to the president.
What is true is that the forum would be less likely to blame (instead they would go for the actual poster) and investigations could be more "polite". But I think (and expect) that a claim like this would be investigated.
Do you realize it has been almost 150 years since the USA had any serious conflict in its territory? And that meanwhile they have tapped resources from previously undeveloped areas?
TFTY
I am translating from memory, so forgive me if I am wrong somewhere...
"A little cronopius was looking for the key of the main door in his bed table, his bed table in his dormroom, his dormroom in his house. Here the cronopius did have to stop, since he could not get out of his house without the main door keys".
Julio Cortázar
IIRC, speaking about Spain, the law is also against "driving without due care and attention".
That said, over time the meaning of that phrase is interpreted to take into account new data. When it was seen that using the phone resulted in reduced "care and attention", it was defined that driving while on a phone was indeed "driving without care and attention". That meant that now the police had clear instructions about this, and that there was a public information campaign before it was put into effect. I.E., before the change it was up to the police if the driver was being careless, after the change if you are at the phone then you automatically are being careless.
Well, at least you are honest.
You are missing the point... If you have a gun, then you need to brag about having a gun and being able to kill anybody who gives you the very minimum reason to do so (or not even the minimum).
I remember a post from someone here. A drunk/hunk guy was trying to open his garage door. Most probably the intruder would not had succeed, and even then it was unlikely that he ventured in the inhabited part of the house. The gun-loving-boy answer? Get out with a shotgun and kill him. And, of course, later come to /, and tell everybody (without being asked for) the gory details about what a shotgun can do to a human body.
The sad part is that even explaining it to him, he would not ever get to see what was wrong with him...
Spain got upset during the Davis cup once. The national anthem from the 30s before Franco was played. Though I suspect if you'd made such a cock up in Barcelona, Catalunya there'd be bemusement and muffled applause. When I was there a few months ago, the republican flag replete with purple was visible among 'occupy' protesters.
No, we where not upset. Most of us understood that shit happens, that whoever was looking for the hymn just chose an outdated source, and that it was not a political statement from anybody. And that anyway none of us knew the Hymn of Australia, so it was a tie. Most that happened was some jokes and a little nostalgia from some people.
Of course, a couple of politics decided that they had to show off their "dedication to our country" by acting as if Australia was in the brink of declaring war against Spain, and showing what a bunch of bullocks we usually have in government. That's all.
In a tennis competition in Australia, the Spanish Republica Himno de Riego was played instead of the Royal March when the players got in the podium.
Anyway, except for the few bureaucrats who thought their work was to show the world how enraged all of the spaniards were, most people understood it was just an error and not a political statement and a few make a few jokes. That was all about it.
Doesn't it really show that the US was not interested in being involved in another war, as it was still dealing with the fallout of a major economic crisis? (Hint: "Great Depression")
Those who don't know History....
After WWII, Spain was in an isolated country, with no fuel, little industry and (still) internal and external opposition to the dictatorship.
The USA easily ignored their own rethoric about democracy and freedom and used Franco as an ally in Cold War, giving him entry in internation organizations (like the UN), providing him with funds and commerce and strenghtening its regime. Invading the country to restore democracy maybe was asking a little too much, supporting a dictator another one.
Of course, not that it was nothing new (banana republics) or that they would not repeat (South Korea, Vietnam, Iran, Chile, Argentina, Panama, Irak....)
well, its an interesting one. Did Franco win or help win the war for the allies?
Certainly not. Franco's Spain provided intelligence for the germans (see operation mincemeat), supply ports for their u-boats, and men for the invassion of Russia. Renmember that Franco declared Spain non-beligerant (we don't fight but we are favourable to) rather than neutral (we favour no one).
Spain has always awnated Gibralter, and despite all the Axis help he got he did not even move to take Gibralter.
Easier said than done. After three years of civil wars, Spain was more trouble than it was worth as an ally. Franco did indeed try to negotiate an alliance with Germany, but it demanded such support (and meant more coast to defend) that a deal was not reached.
All because Spain did not even bother to support the Axis enough to take Gibralter.
Even ignoring Franco's support for Germany.... does that mean that Franco's regime was less dictatorial or brutal?
Because it shows how easily the USA and other governments abandon all pretense of "morality" when it suits well their interest. The war against Hitler was "moral", yet helping his friends (and, in the Nurember trials, many of his economical/industrial supporters) was ok because it suited them.
If you can not lie about it, make the world forget it (hint: everyone who objects is a communist!!!).
How much will it cost me to remember being an invincible secret agent on Mars??
<pedantic>That's nothing, I want to remember how I saved Mankind from an alien invasion while I was a kid. Just by being kind to them.</pedantic>
During George "duh" Bush's administration the number of regulations increased from 110,000 to 150,000 pages. The New York Times must be using a definition of the word "deregulation" that I am not familiar with, because I would call a ~50% increase in regulations the Exact Opposite of deregulation.
Without context, the figure is pointless. It is like claiming that my software is better than yours, because mine has 150000 LOC while yours only has 110000 LOC(*). Likewise, they could have heavily regulated certains practices that affected only to marginal parts of the economy and deregulated critical ones.
For what I read here and in other articles, private companies were pretty much happy with signing away untenable mortgages because they were just selling them away, without sharing the risk. This lead to a situation where doing such simple things as checking if the borrower had a stable income and how much it was in relation to the loan where "unwise", because it could lead to the mortgage not being allowed (which meant less money for the company who sold those loans to idio... investors because they got AAA+ from a rating firm).
When the government allows this (a company profitting from brokering deals and without any responsability, and an investor who does not know what he is buying), it will end always the same way. The only incognite is how much time it will take.
(*) No car analogy, sorry.
For what I read, very few of the loans were "mandated". Instead, there was a massive impulse to loan to anyone without proper checks, because in the end the banks were just going to sell the junk to other investors (assured by the AAA+ from rating companies that are still out there).
This article explain why people with no ability to repay the mortgage where granted one, not because mandated loans but because the mortgaging company got its benefit from firming and selling the loan (doing a risk analysis might mean that the loan was not granted --> less profits). Also in the CS Monitor I found an article (can't found it right now, I will be grateful if someone points a link) about workers in banks and mortgage agencies, relating how they were forced (by their bosses) to accept anything as a proof of the capability of the borrower to repay the loan. Those who tried to do things in a sane way were reprimanded because they did not met the quotas that the "insane" agents did met.
In one of the stories, someone did arrive with a picture of himself in front of a bussiness (IIRC it was a gardening one), claimed that this was proof that he owned the bussiness and demanded a loan. He got it.
You are assuming that everyone that reads the news report will calmly and reasonably think if it can be applied to them, and act accordingly. You do not expect people to understand it as "OH MY GOD I CAN DO THE SAME FREE MONEY AND PONIES!" and to rush irresponsably to their financial death.*
Sir, I do admire your optimism.
* Now seriously, of course there will be both kind of readers. Type 1 readers won't make any money for the casino, nor any loss. Type 2 will make money for the casino. Anyway, I agree that type 2 people won't be enough (and most importantly, won't go to the same casinos reported in the news) so probably the casinos would have preferred to keep the money even if they missed the publicity.
They will call the FBI to warn them that a horde of terrorist are getting ready to kill one of each ten habitants of the USA.
Radon
Radon comes from the decay of elements from granite. If the soil is not granitic there is less problem
You better like the temperature inside, because you're certainly not burning anything to keep warm: carbon monoxide and low oxygen.
In fact the main advantage is that the temperature naturally does not vary too much during the year, keeping your home hot in winter and cold in summer. Of course, to begin with, you would not start living in a cave in a region where caves inner temperature is not comfortable (at least related to the other available options).
But not a lot of noise complaints I bet.
Given that solids transmit sounds better than air, in fact that could be a real problem. The positive point is that if your neighbour sets his amps at the maximum power, reverberation in his cave will make it way more uncomfortable for him than for you, even if he likes the music.
The main problems would be air flow and sunlight, but then again, for centuries most of the people spent less time indoors than they do now so it was then a less critical issue.
In Spain there have been dwellings in caves for quite a time, the ones I think are most famous are in Guadix, Andalucia and in Granada but I found others in distint parts too. And while some (v.g. Ibiza) may be inhabited by more hippy minded people, the others have been used by "regular" people for centuries.
Hardly news, and hardly chinese at all....
Agree with what? I condone private transactions between individuals being private and not subject to government intervention of any sort, including taxes. If I sell someone my junk I should not be taxed as I made no income.
Duh? Revise your definition of "income", please.
I converted an asset into cash - at the end of the day I'm even.
The same could be say when you buy an iPhone, or a car... yet there are taxes.
However, the government doesn't see it this way (they are wrong of course),
You don't think the same than the government (or someone else), so it is obvious that they are wrong (because you are always right, isn't it?)
Forgive me if your "explanations" fail to impress me.
they want to take a piece every time money changes hands. Eliminating cash only makes this assured.
You could argue and explain why you think sales tax are a bad idea. You can vote a politician that promises to repeal it, or present yourself in such a platform. You can even decide to break the law and ignore it, hoping that you won't get caught because the amount you manage is very small and not very often.
What you can't do is to decide which laws apply to you and which don't. Sorry but that is how it works. If you must pay taxes for your yard sale and you decide you don't, you are breaking the law. Your opinion (or even if you know) about the law is not relevant.